


In Arduis Fidelis

by jachiavellian



Category: Holby City
Genre: Angst, Drabble, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 05:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7789054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jachiavellian/pseuds/jachiavellian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had been a fool to think that marriage would ground her, and an even bigger fool to think that children might encourage some semblance of normalcy. In truth, her perception of normalcy was too closely linked to the idea of mediocrity for it to have ever achieved anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Arduis Fidelis

A morning glow presided over the barren landscape of southern Afghanistan, contouring the rough terrain with dull shades of umber and ochre. The gentle slopes of distant hills formed a somewhat disorienting gradient through which the yellow of the land embraced the livid stretch of sky above. Far below, where the terrain yielded to form a shallow valley, the sea of brown hues parted to give way to the soft pinks and greens of a poppy field. It was tentatively spread, not daring to encroach too far upon the arid wasteland, and along one side its nervous progression was aborted by a rudimentary dirt path which marred the landscape like a scar. Silence pervaded. The atmosphere was heavy, swelling with the monumental significance of what was to come.

At some point after noon, an indistinct military vehicle crawled along the road, appearing from above like an insect on a twig. Its pace was slow, but there was a definite air of urgency about its movements, and the two female passengers inside surveyed the area before them with a hawklike intensity as they drove. In contrast to the setting however, their conversation was light, voices never rising above the volume necessary to be heard over the growl of the engine. The woman on the left removed her gaze from the road for a moment, turning to direct it at her partner. The fierce intent behind her eyes softened.

"What about this contract then, Bern?" Her cheeks bunched in a gentle smile. "You gonna accept it?"

Her partner's eyes were fixed ahead, but the skin around them creased as the smile was returned. "I've dedicated my entire life to the army - I'm not about to stop now, don't worry. My only concern is Marcus and the kids." Her smile faltered at that, brow furrowing ever so slightly.

"How are you going to tell them?" the first woman asked, unusually hesitant in her query. There was a pause, during which Bernie retracted one hand from the wheel to tuck a wisp of blonde hair into her beret. Her fingers passed briefly over the cap badge above her left eye, seeking out the delicately engraved staff of Asclepius, and the letters residing underneath it. _In Arduis Fidelis_. Faithful in adversity. Painfully ironic, she lamented, given the circumstances.

"I- I don't know, Alex. I might just drop it into the next phone call if I feel brave enough." A shared glance between them confirmed the fact that both women knew she wouldn't. Whilst Bernie was fearless in theatre, and confident to a fault with a scalpel, nothing terrified her more than the complex web of emotions involved in matrimony. Surgery was simple: open up, fix what's wrong, close up. But relationships weren't so textbook, and she struggled more than she'd like to admit with the distinct lack of rules involved.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Bernie's focus consumed by the action of driving. Her knuckles had paled somewhat around the steering wheel, the colour sucked from them by the strength of her grip. Noticing this, Alex reached out a hand and placed it on Bernie's thigh, thumb brushing small circles into the rough fabric of her trousers. The intimacy of the gesture sent ripples of warmth from the contact point of each fingertip, and Bernie fought back a shiver as the heat seeped through her uniform and caressed the skin of her leg.

"I love you, you know that?" Alex spoke softly, lips curving up in an expression of absolute sincerity. Bernie felt something inside her break. Those three words had never invited such strong emotion in her when Marcus uttered them.

Bernie turned to glance at her. "I know," she murmured, eyes roaming Alex's face, drinking in the gentle slope of her cheekbones, the shadows cast across them by her lashes, the way the light hit her lower lip. As she opened her mouth to speak again however, Alex's gaze slipped from her lover's face, and the muscles in her face contracted, conveying both alarm and fear simultaneously.

Before she even had the chance to speak, Bernie knew something was wrong, and was in the process of whipping her head around to follow her gaze when Alex let out a cry.

"Look out!"

Bernie's eyes were drawn to a bright light nearby. The harsh glare of the sun was bouncing off of the surface of a rusty metal cylinder, partially concealed by the dip at the side of the road. Her stomach flipped unpleasantly; she recognised it immediately as an IED, and had no doubt that they had already triggered the device. They had a matter of seconds, no more, before the two of them were blown sky-high.

Without stopping to think, she tugged violently at the wheel, sending the vehicle veering sharply to the left. Her foot slammed down harder on the pedal until she felt it groan in protest. A gasp was ripped from Alex's throat at the ferocity of the manoeuvre.

Bernie was not a religious woman, but she caught herself broadcasting a silent prayer to whoever might be listening.

There was a huge jolt and out of the corner of her eye she saw Alex's silhouette blaze into focus, hemmed with bright light from the explosion. Her partner was wide eyed, dark hair framing her face like molten gold. In the madness of the moment, Bernie thought vaguely that she looked like a phoenix from the one of the numerous mythology books she had favoured as a child.

A millisecond later, there was a deafening bang and she felt her eardrums throb forcefully.

Plumes of black smoke erupted around them, and there was a sharp crack as the windscreen of the vehicle fractured.

And then the world turned upside down in a rush of green and pink and, finally, black.

* * *

 Berenice Wolfe sat up in her bed, drawing a shuddering breath. The hair framing her forehead was slick with sweat, and she felt the arrhythmic bounce of her pulse echoing in her ears. Blinking a few times and exhaling forcefully to compose herself, she drew her legs up under the covers, all too aware of the damp sheen coating her skin. The night air felt oppressively hot against the triangle of décolletage left exposed by her pyjama shirt. Tentatively, she slipped a hand down beneath the collar, fingers trembling as she sought out the scar left by Oliver Valentine when he had opened up her chest on the operating table to hold her heart in his hands. Her fingertips ghosted over the disfigured skin, tingling in reaction to the erratic hammering of the heartbeat that met them there. The other scar, left by Guy Self on the right side of her neck, was not nearly so prominent, but she knew from studying her reflection carefully that it could still be seen upon closer inspection, like a wisp of silver hair against her fair skin. It was not that the scars bothered her from an aesthetic perspective; Bernie had racked up a rather impressive number of them over the length of her military career, even wore them with some degree of pride. Rather, they reminded her of the accident that had taken her away from the relative emotional safety of the RAMC and into the neurochemical train-wreck that was her personal life.

As she waited for her pulse to slow, Bernie reflected on her nightmare. It was the first time she had dreamt of the events of that day; usually her nights were tormented by visions of broken bodies and the constant pitter-patter of gunfire. In fact, she had strictly prevented herself from thinking about the IED incident over the past months, with the exception of Alex's appearance in Holby, when recollections of that day had reared their ugly heads inside her mind.

A familiar ache blossomed in her chest at the thought of her former lover. She and Alex had existed in an impenetrable bubble of bliss in Afghanistan, stealing moments together in between their work. Alex would frequently slip into her room after a particularly tough day and clamber into bed with her. More often than not they were both too tired or too emotionally drained to have sex, taking pleasure instead in the simple intimacy of skin-to-skin contact. Bernie had never experienced anything like it; with Marcus there had been a strong emphasis on the sex, and whilst she had very much enjoyed that in the earlier years of her marriage, the novelty had worn off after two decades of the same routine. She wondered perhaps if it was the rituals of loving someone that had attracted her to her ex-husband, rather than love for him. With Alex, there was no distinction. Loving her was all-encompassing, and Bernie had found herself loving every part of her equally.

A wave of bitterness passed over her as she reflected upon the fact that, whilst she had accepted Alex's vices, that particular sentiment had not been returned. Bernie was all too aware of her own flaws. Hell, she had joined the army partially to get away from the mess that was her personal life. The added complexities of a husband and children had only made that deep-rooted desire to flee more potent, and it seemed that any measures Bernie took in an attempt to stabilise life outside of the army only succeeded in making it infinitely more complicated. She had been a fool to think that marriage would ground her, and an even bigger fool to think that children might encourage some semblance of normalcy. In truth, her perception of normalcy was too closely linked to the idea of mediocrity for it to have ever achieved anything. Not that she resented her children, of course; Bernie loved Cameron and Charlotte more than anything, and her pride in their achievements was unparalleled, but her own cowardice was perpetually acting against that, making a mockery of the relationships she tried so hard to make work.

"When you've sorted your life out, come and find me," Alex had said to her. Bernie remembered the scene in vivid detail; both of her hands had been clasped around Alex's left hand, and she had refused to let go as the other woman tried to leave. If she tried to picture it hard enough, she could still feel the buzz of emotional electricity that had simmered between their fingers as Alex had twisted free from her grasp. Yet whilst months ago the memory had instilled her with a profound sadness, thinking back on those words now only served to incite anger. They were too presumptuous, too dismissive. Too unforgiving.

And then Serena had called Bernie's life a mess, a description she could only really agree with, despite the slight pang of betrayal she felt regarding the fact that it had come from a friend. Truth be told though, Bernie could not remember a time when her life hadn't been a mess. Even in Afghanistan at Alex's side her apparent emotional stability had been nothing more than a façade, one which was fated to crumble as soon as she returned to England. And if Alex wasn't prepared to love her despite the chaos that was her personal life, perhaps their relationship was never supposed to work out. That thought felt surprisingly comforting, and Bernie wondered briefly if she had already moved on from their affair. Certainly she could think back on it with a little more clarity, even if the thought was accompanied by a little stab of pain in her chest, and even if her usually steady stream of consciousness was choked by an overwhelming want, the likes of which she could only compare to the longing of a child for a toy at Christmas.

Her mind full of Alex and the IED and, somewhat inexplicably, Serena Campbell, she sank back down beneath the covers and closed her eyes. Logically her internal dilemma was best suited to the morning, when her head would hopefully be clearer, but her brain refused to switch off, and all night she tossed and turned until finally morning sunlight crept through the window and the pervasive sound of her alarm ripped through the silence.

 


End file.
